


From the ashes

by Dunadanka



Category: The Hobbit (Jackson Movies), The Hobbit - All Media Types
Genre: Drama & Romance, F/M, First Love, Unresolved Romantic Tension
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-10-25
Updated: 2014-11-16
Packaged: 2018-02-22 13:58:36
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 9
Words: 5,876
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2510270
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Dunadanka/pseuds/Dunadanka
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A series of drabbles about what could have happened in the 24 days between the death of Smaug and the Battle of Five armies.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Smartina](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Smartina/gifts).



The floor shuddered, dust fell from the ceiling, as if the bargeman’s fragile house had just got kicked by one of the stone giants that were breaking each other’s granite bones on a stormy night back in the Misty Mountains. 

"What's going on there?" Oin muttered. 

Grabbing a kitchen knife from the the floor beside the overturned table, Fíli quickly went out of the room and looked around. They were not the only ones to have felt the shuddering of the ground: alarmed faces were peeping out of the windows of the neighboring houses, restless echoes of voices were floating over the water. And then he saw it: the inky outline of the Lonely Mountain in the distance had bloomed with a scarlet spark of fire, as if the gold inside had torn its black walls and was now flowing out. Fíli suddenly felt his heart pounding madly in his chest. What is this? What has happened there? 

"His wealth shall flow in fountains, and the rivers golden run," came the boy’s voice behind him. Bain had come out and was looking at the mountain, too. "Is the prophecy coming true?"

Fíli flinched. The prophecies do not come true that quickly, not when there is a dragon lying on their way… 

A slim silhouette of green and fire slid past him to the balustrade. Tauriel. For a few moments she was, frozen in a motionless strain of a drawn bow, looking toward the mountain. Then she turned to him, and Fili did not know whether it was the moonlight whitening her face or horror when she exclaimed: 

"This is no gold. It is a dragon!" 

She darted back into the house. 

"Leave, quickly!" came her voice from inside the house. "The dragon is coming, this roof is no more protection for you!" 

Through a hole in the wall beside the door Fíli saw the younger girl began to cry bitterly, frantically clutching her sister’s apron, and suddenly remembered the only time Thorin spoke about the last day of Erebor, when in a blink of an eye all he knew and could love was blown away in ashes and smoke. Countless unfamiliar lives taken by Smaug years ago on that day suddenly came back to him in these three human children, and, helping rescue useless but dear belongings from the ruined rooms, forcing the girls and Kíli onto the boat, and desperately trying to fight the dragon fire off the doomed house, he was not now and not here. And just like Thorin he did not manage to save anything, and just looked helplessly, together with a handful of parched, charred by horror survivors, on their world writhing in fiery agony and dying.


	2. Chapter 2

Smaug was dead, but none of those who had survived in burned Esgaroth felt like their troubles truly were over. A new life had just begun, defenseless and weak as a newborn child, and the barely warm spark of it had to be fed and tended to every minute. 

Those once brought together under Bard’s roof talked little, each silently doing their own job, wordlessly joining their forces to survive. This silence was broken only on the third day since the dragon was dead. The bargeman’s eldest daughter was cooking dinner from those modest supplies the men managed to collect, Kíli was helping her scale the fish, and Fíli, having no job to busy himself with, was just watching. 

"That elven lady, the warrior," Sigrid spoke suddenly, snatching him from his thoughts. 

"Tauriel," Kíli supplied, smiling at the pile of fish scales at his feet. He found some inexplicable delight in just saying that name. 

"Yes. I would love to be like her, someday," the girl said seriously. 

Fíli stared at her.    
"Why?" 

"She saved us!" Sigrid replied with sudden passion. "Those orcs would have slaughtered us all like sheep! There were so many of them, and she handled them all by herself, she didn’t need help. And what was I able to do? To hide?" She snorted with scathing insult at her own words, and turned away. 

"What's wrong with that?" Fíli asked, puzzled, and grinned involuntarily at how fast Tauriel managed to kindle admiration in the hearts of her new acquaintances. "You're a woman, you should not raise steel".

"So that I die from someone other’s steel?" 

"You did not die then". 

"Only because there were others to protect me. But there is not always going to be someone at hand, to lift steel instead of me". 

"Always, of course!" Fíli said. "A woman is born to know no fear, and a man to know no cold, because they are meant to be near. And if this is not so, than they themselves have decided otherwise". 

Sigrid was silent for a long time, searching for an answer, and Fíli thought she was about to speak, but she only bowed her head and set to work. 

Watching her work was interesting, as the work of any master, and here, in the tiny kitchen of the single house at the shore not ruined by fire (this house, as the best one of all that people now had, they had given to Bard), Sigrid undoubtedly was in her element, like a dwarf in his smithy: no movement needless, not a moment wasted, not a single thing out of place. While the fish scaled by Kíli was boiling in the pot, Sigrid gutted and cut a pike and peeled vegetables for the soup, tidied around and set about making bread. Her hands, shiny with butter, kneaded the dough quickly and deftly, shaped it into a crescent, sprinkled it with some grains — a simple thing, though as beautiful as Bifur’s toys and Dori's golden wonders. 

Footsteps and voices came from the stairs behind the door: Bain and the little girl had returned. With their arrival the house became too crowded, and Fíli thought it best to leave.   
"Tauriel certainly cannot bake bread like this," he said, pausing at the door. 

Sigrid glanced at him and said nothing, yet somehow Fíli felt she was pleased.


	3. Chapter 3

It soon became clear that the conversation about Tauriel was not over yet. The following morning, Fíli, sitting on the steps of the narrow porch, was sharpening the only dagger he now had left, when Sigrid appeared at the doorway. In her hands there was a tousled tuft of herbs meant to conceal the paucity of their future meal with their rich flavors. Fíli moved to give her space on the step, and she sat down next to him with a nod. They both had been doing their work for some silent minutes, when Fíli looked up from the dagger on his knees and saw that Sigrid was fingering her herbs without even looking at them, her eyes fixed on the blade in his hand. She caught his eye and hurriedly turned back to her work, but he noticed that her face had turned pink. 

"Women of your folk never fight, do they?" she asked, after some time, sorting stems and leaves into two piles with concentration that looked a bit over-the-top. 

Fíli glanced at her. 

"There are men for this" he said with a chuckle.

"There are men among the elven folk too. But lady Tauriel fights anyway". 

"It's her business," he answered lightly. "I wouldn't, if I were her". 

Sigrid snorted. 

"What do your women do, then?" she asked sarcastically. "Sit day and night on silk cushions and don't even lift a spoon themselves to eat?" 

"They do a lot of things, no less than men do. Even fight, if so they wish. But their lives are much more precious than ours, so they rarely wish it". 

"But I wish!" Sigrid blurted out as soon as he said that. For these words she had spoken to him altogether. But the next words she said Fíli certainly did not expect.

"Teach me," she asked quietly. Please!" 

For a long moment there was silence.

"Will your father let you take up the sword?" Fíli asked instead of answering, not able to come up with anything better. 

Sigrid froze, lips parted and cheeks flushed bright, just like an ashamed child, but her voice remained firm and resolute. 

"He is not here. He can't forbid something he doesn't know about!" 

Fili shook his head. 

"No". 

"Your women can fight!" Sigrid exclaimed angrily. "Why can't I?" 

"Ask your father for what you can and cannot do". It was a cheap shot, but any reference to Bard, as Fíli now saw, would work much better in shaking this sparrowish braced up determination off the girl than any reasonable arguments he could possibly think of. "I will not teach you to fight". 

To his surprise, Sigrid did not protest. Silently she rose to her feet, picked up her herbs and disappeared inside the house. The door closed behind her, and the barely audible sound of it somehow irritated Fíli, who expected to hear a loud, angry bang.


	4. Chapter 4

"If it were Bain to ask you, you wouldn't refuse," Sigrid muttered.

It was early in the morning, and there was no one in the house but Fíli and her. Kíli, her brother and the little girl were outside, on the shore. Sigrid was gazing at her plate, and it was clear she was ashamed of bringing that subject up again, but couldn't help it. 

Losing last dregs of patience, Fíli put down his mug with a loud thud.

"How old are you?" he asked. 

"Sixteen," she replied tentatively. 

"Well, I'm five times your age," he stated calmly, "and for almost all of those years I have lived with a weapon in hand. And you think you'll be such a dab hand in a couple of days that any orc will flee at the sound of your name?" 

"I do not want to become a great warrior!" Sigrid exclaimed angrily, clenching the hem of her apron in her feverish fingers. "I only want to be able to protect. I have strength enough for this!"

Fíli put his elbow on the table and held out his hand. 

"Go ahead," he nodded, meeting her puzzled look. "Push with both hands, do whatever you want. If you win, then so be it, I'll teach you. And if not, you will go mind your own business and won't meddle with others'".

Sigrid looked at him with desperation and anger, and Fili thought with some satisfaction that she would refuse, but she didn't. With a quick deep breath she pursed her lips and firmly grasped Fíli's hand. 

He barely felt her effort. Even Dwalin not always managed to best him, let alone her, with her bird-like light bones and maidenly, though ruffled softness. However, she did not give up, and was stubbornly trying to force his hand down to the table, her teeth clenched and eyebrows knitted, as if she was squeezing all her strength into this competition, like juice from a berry. For the first time Fíli thought her request might have been serious, that it was not childish fascination with outlandish winds that spoke in her, but true need. 

"You're weak," he told her almost gently. "And it's not bad. Nobody forges blades from silk". 

He had barely finished, when Sigrid's eyes suddenly blew wide, her gaze riveted to something right behind him, and she screamed in terror: 

"Kíli!" 

A tight string of constant alarm strained in his chest since the very birth of his brother rang out desperately as Fíli spun round; the sun lashed him across the eyes as he tried to make out Kili's shape on the shore and saw him sitting quietly beside Bain, just as he was before, and then his hand was suddenly slammed into the itchy unplaned boards of the table, and Sigrid's jubilant eyes met his when he turned back. 

She pressed his hand into the table once more before letting go, just to be sure.

"Everyone has their own weakness," she said, and her voice was earnest, sad even, despite the look of exuberant and touchingly childish triumph on her face she tried but couldn't hide. "You know it. That's why it's you I'm asking for strength".


	5. Chapter 5

Promises ought to be kept, and so the following evening, having finished the pile of tasks required from everyone by the camp life, Fili and Sigrid left the tent city, and behind the grey veil of wintery bare trees the first lesson began. 

They didn't have weapons, the city's armory and Bard's rebellious supplies had perished in the lake along with Esgaroth itself, and all the armor, bows and swords that had been rescued from the water in the hands and on the shoulders of men were now at the Mountain together with their owners. But Fíli was not going to give Sigrid battle steel. Instead, he handed her her own kitchen knife, which she had recently been cutting her brother's silvery catch with.

"Attack me," he ordered curtly.

Sigrid blinked and frowned, and he thought she was about to object, but she only tightened her grip on the bone handle and followed his order. Attacked him, raising the knife comically high and sticking it into the air somewhere far above his shoulder. Because her eyes were tightly shut.

Fili didn't laugh, and maybe that was why she risked looking at him. 

"That's how it goes," he said quietly. "Every time you take up arms, you'll have to look at death. You'll have to. Because otherwise someone else will look at your death. Many choose the latter". 

Sigrid was listening, her breath heavy, as if she had not just once waved a knife, but withstood a long and tiresome battle. 

"I have seen death," she said, "many times. My life wasn't that sweet". 

Fíli did not remind her that dying and killing were not the same thing, nor did he react to a distinct ringing of challenge in her last words. Taking her knife, he repeated her recent attack and hit a thick trunk of an old tree in front of him, broken and withered with age. The knife stuck into the bark, making chipwood spray from a shallow wound it left. 

"This would be enough for an unarmed," he said. "But for the likes of those orcs you'll need something better". And he stabbed again, this time not only his arm thrown forward, but the whole body, unwinding his whole force as a straightening spring. The blade sunk into the soft wood up to the middle. Had the trunk been sturdier, the weak non-combat iron would have broken from the force of the collision. 

Silently looking at Sigrid, Fili nodded. She said nothing, took his knife and repeated his movement. Not right. She tried again and dropped the knife when it hit the bark at a completely wrong angle and slid out of her fingers. 

Fili picked it up, tucked it into his belt and began explaining. In honest, seriously, as is she were a man. And she was listening and looking so intently, that he couldn't forget she were not.


	6. Chapter 6

Sigrid turned out to be a diligent pupil. And because of this the following morning Fíli was woken by the sound of angry voices busting out suddenly and loudly, like a festive cracker. He barely had time to peep out of his and Kili's tent, when the newborn day hit him square on the face with Bain's fist.

"You, with my sister!" the boy shouted furiously. 

Realization took some time to finally dawn on Fíli. The day before they - he and Sigrid - had been gone for many hours and returned from the forest after dark, both in rumpled clothes, and she had leaves in her hair after a couple of takes on practicing a defense maneuver that sent her rolling to the ground. Yet Fíli did not immediately realize what brought the boy to such rage: back home what they were now suspected of was the business of only the two of them, and no one would dare to intervene and throw sand on the flames lit by the Maker. Well, here they must be thinking differently of such things. 

"I was only teaching her to fight," Fíli answered to the fierce accusation in Bain's eyes and voice, and he wasn't given time to say any more. Trying to avoid another wicked boyish blow aimed at his face, he tripped over the tent-peg, tried to swing away and realized he wouldn't make it, when somebody's hand suddenly caught Bain's fist with remarkable dexterity and rapidly spun it out, using the boy's own force against him. Just as he taught her the day before... Bain gasped in pain and doubled over, clasping his hand to his belly, and Sigrid gasped along with him and hid her hands behind her back, as if horrified of what they had just done.  
"Sorry, I'm so sorry, it…it just happened, I didn't mean to", she chattered incoherently. "I have been doing it over and over again, so many times that I... He was just teaching me to fight!" 

Bain inhaled painfully through gritted teeth.

"That I see!.." he muttered and grimly rubbed at his aching hand. 

***

After the incident with her brother Sigrid had been avoiding Fíli and didn't ask for any more lessons. The mood in the camp had noticeably changed. Fíli understood well enough that he, Kíli and the others, though not under guard, were no guests here, but this new tense estrangement around the four of them was making it all the clearer. What was happening at the Mountain, they did not know for sure, having nothing but rumors, like everyone else, but one thing was certain: Thorin did not hurry to fulfill his generous promise and share his wealth, now free from the dragon, with the people of Lake-town. With some vague regret Fili thought that was the reason Sigrid decided to stay away from him - the enemy is not asked for protection, after all - when one evening she approached him and asked matter-of-factly, if he had not changed his mind on teaching her.

***

They were sitting on a moss-covered trunk of a fallen tree. Sigrid was resting under the pretense of pulling dry twigs and leaves out of her hair, and Fili was waiting for her to finish both these things.  

"Did it take you long?" she asked. "To master this hold?"

Fili grinned, remembering.

"It was Dwalin to teach me, and his lessons would only end when I either had mastered whatever he was teaching me, or could no longer stand upright. So I tried very hard".

"I'm trying hard too!" Sigrid exclaimed disappointedly. "But it doesn't help".

"No, you're doing pretty well" Fíli told her and that wasn't a lie. She, indeed, was making progress, and much more quickly than he expected.

Sigrid lifted her head and looked at him hesitantly.

"Really?"

"Really".

"Then why do you never say that I do something well?"

Fíli smiled.

"I told you that you bake well," he teased. Sigrid withheld a smile and rose to her feet.

"Once again," she ordered, and when Fili for the thousandth time attacked her with a quick and wicked punch, she did everything flawlessly: his hand whistled past her face, his second blow met emptiness, and then his neck was tightly squeezed with her forearm in the very grip she couldn't get right for so long.

"Did I do well?" Sigrid asked, her impatient and joyful anticipation so at odds with what they were doing that Fíli couldn't help chuckling.

"Yes," he admitted briefly.

"Praise me then!" she demanded, releasing him and folding her arms on her chest.

Fíli looked at her, racking his brain for the words Dwalin would use to praise him and finding nothing. Dwalin did not praise, he only nodded and got on with things, and suddenly Fíli felt he was no longer eager to follow in his steps. 

"Splendid, Sigrid," he said, looking her in the eyes. "Very well".


	7. Chapter 7

Storm came streaming over the elven army, like a banner. They brought help there, to the bare shores of the Lake, but life was not made easier. In stuffy silent moment before the thunder it is always hard to breathe, even though the sky is adorned with lightnings. Alarming news were coming from the slopes of the Lonely Mountain. Again and again Father's messengers approached the gates and left with nothing, and though the dragon blood he had shed made Bard invulnerable in the eyes of the others, Sigrid had never been more afraid for him.

Maybe that fear, no matter how useless (after all, what could she do now, tied to the house and the little ones and having promised not to set foot out of the camp?), had played a part: evening after evening she was spending with Fíli in the woods, already whitened with the first snow, and putting so much effort in her combat training that she no longer had to ask for praise - Fíli spoke himself.

They both spoke, and a lot. Sometimes they were giving more time to words than to work, but these conversations strangely helped Sigrid no less than any new hold or punch she learned, and fear, clawing on her endlessly, would run away from the sound of their voices just as well as from her violent thoughts that she would never be an easy prey again. Sigrid did not understand why, and it was not important. It was good enough that for once she simply wanted to talk. Perhaps that was because it was finally her to be listened to, not someone she always had to be. And she talked. Talked about everything that was blown to her mind by dangerous, ominous winds around, she even sang once, a local funny ditty about a goose in love with a water lily. They then laughed all the way home and it was wonderful, unusual - she seldom laughed, too seldom, perhaps, for her age. 

Tilda heard them. 

"All is well?" she asked suddenly, when she and Sigrid were alone in their dark room.

Sigrid frowned in surprise.

"What do you mean?"

Tilda shifted under her blanket, and Sigrid made out that the girl sat up in bed and was now looking at her.

"You said Da laughed only with mother…" she said quietly. "And all was well back then".

Sigrid didn't sleep that night.

***

As soon as it was possible, Sigrid got out of the house and left the camp. She couldn't be near anybody, she needed air, space, a little freedom, and she walked and walked somewhere, not really choosing her way, until she found herself on the shore of the lake. Dead frosty grass cracked under her feet, the water was dark and still. News brought by Bain only now started to really sink in on her. People named her father their ruler. He will be king!.. And Bain, sweet funny Bain with a wooden sword and heroic dreams will turn into a prince in silver chain mail and a sparkling crown, as if by magic, and she and Tilda will become princesses... She heard herself laughing, and that sound scared her: it was impossible here - here, among lifeless lands and cold waters, before this deep, rippled mound of her past. A beggar girl in an old dress, she was looking at herself in the black mirror of the lake, and a new sky was reflecting there for her, a new future.

 

***  
Black stormy sky makes you wish for the sun all the stronger, and in those difficult, cold and bloodless days deep in the shadow of war, people needed joy, needed it more than ever. The air reeked of grief, and only the smell of festive fires and honey could muffle it.

Washing herself of sweat and dust from everyday, Sigrid looked at the cyanotic mark left by an orc's blow across her chest near the collarbones. Lady Tauriel had dressed this wound for her, and only yesterday Sigrid was allowed to remove the bandages, soaked in some unfamiliar healing potion. Dark water was lapping lazily around her, caressing her skin with trembling cold. The girl touched the long purplish scar on her chest, and suddenly a thought of another touch, never experienced, never even thought of before, drove her out of the water, and, pulling on her clothes clinging to her wet skin, she was in such embarrassed and clumsy hurry, as if someone was really looking at her. As if… No.


	8. Chapter 8

The dress, red as a poppy, embroidered with black and blue ribbons, was a little loose in the chest, but it was the most beautiful of all her things, and the most precious one, too. It belonged to Mother. It cost her bad burns and many bruises, but Sigrid saved it from the burning, ruined house. That was the only Mother's thing she now had left.

She was looking at herself in a wide bowl full of water, braiding her hair this way and that, then let it down and put her comb aside. In the dim light of the candle her plain, linen-like, white and blue looks seemed strangely different, as if the same mosaic had been set with different stones, and she seemed to herself now unexpectedly mature and unexpectedly, dangerously beautiful. With a frantically cheerful feeling she stirred up her liquid looking glass with her hand and left the room.

Fíli looked at her with his usual secluded frankness, and it were his words, not her reflection that she believed when he said:

"You're very beautiful, Sigrid".

She tilted her head, looked into his eyes again, waiting for something else, something different, but he just stepped aside to let her pass, closer to the lights and fun ahead, and so she did, her body limp and shaky with those unknown, nameless feelings she had just glimpsed so deep inside herself.

He had the same air of calm, confident force about him, wore it like a heavy warm cloak about his shoulders, just like her father did, and that made it impossible to fear anything when he was near. But he was always a stranger, neither a friend, nor an enemy, and the same cloak was hiding his face under its shadowy hood. He was unlike all of her peers that grew up next door, he was unlike all the people she knew. But he stood by and watched, and it were others who asked her to dance: her childish friends, barely familiar acquaintances, whom she had once or twice seen on the streets, and complete strangers ... She didn't turn them down. The red dress demanded dancing, her sixteen years were screaming for it, but what she herself wanted, clad in this dress and in her years - that she did not know.

He did not ask her to dance. But he looked at her like this... Why did he look, if he didn't make a single step?

***

Useless dances were long gone, but her head was still spinning, and no matter what Sigrid tried to busy herself with, everything was falling from her hands. In the end, abandoning all her tasks and work, she left the camp and went deep into the bare white forest, where a thin blanket of snow had not yet fully hidden the fallen tree on the edge of the ravine, where she and Fíli usually sat resting, and the ash tree bearing so many marks of her knife. She came there for solitude, but somehow was not delighted to find it. It was cold, thin leafless branches could not hold back the wind, and its dry breath, itchy with tiny needles of snow, was freezing her face and hands, already coarse enough, painted ugly and reddish with work... Not the kind of hands a princess should have.

"You're very beautiful, Sigrid".

Her face was so cold her cheeks seemed about to crunch and crack like ice when she smiled a silly, silly smile, rubbing together her hands, numb, cold, weary. And maybe beautiful.

She returned home after dark and found her brother and Tilda on the steps. All ears, they were listening to the barely audible voices drifting from behind the door. Sigrid resolutely walked past them and suddenly glimpsed Father through the little window near the door, but before a single word of joy could escape her lips, she noticed that he was not alone. Fíli, Bofur, and Oin were standing in front of him, listening.

"Leave. Go to the Mountain" came Bard's voice from inside the house. "You were guests here, I will not hold you hostage. And if it comes to war, everyone is free to choose their side".

They listened to him silently, bowed heads in response, and immediately began to prepare for leaving.

The moon was high, the stars drowned in its thick white splendor. Midnight had passed.

Running away from the house, Sigrid was not looking where her legs were taking her. Panic was flapping its wings in her chest, like a frightened bird, and she did not even know what had so suddenly gone wrong... The Lake shown ahead with a sharp white light of reflected night sky, she made out two familiar shapes against black and white shivering waters, and froze, all eyes and ears.

Tauriel slowly lifted her head and held out her hand to the sky, dipped her fingers into the distant shimmering waters of the night, and the white moonlight hugged her palm.

"I loved starlight because I could not touch it," she said quietly. "Because it does not burn like flame, like the sun. Memory shines for us with thousand silver bonfires, so that we see our way in the darkness, but this light does not warm us on this path". She lowered her hand and looked into Kíli's eyes, turning away from the bottomless adamantine radiance of silent heavens towards the warm darkness around her. "I do not want to look at them anymore. I have come where my road led me".

Sigrid did not wait to hear any more words. As quietly as she could she made her way from the Lake back to the camp.

***  
She must tell him. This was the only thought left on her tormented, exhausted mind, and it didn't let go of her for a moment. She must tell. She must be brave. Lady Tauriel was not afraid in her place.


	9. Chapter 9

She was standing at the entrance to the tent and watching him getting ready to leave. Under her gaze every movement seemed strangely difficult, as if the air was growing thick around him, thick like cream whipped into butter.

A lot of time had passed before she broke the silence.

"I said once that I wanted to be like her, like lady Tauriel".

"I remember".

Sigrid straightened her back and lifted her chin with that stern and collected dignity so distinguishable of her father, but her hands were frantically crumpling the hem of her apron - her little sister was clutching her skirts just like that, hiding from war that broke into their peaceful house - and it were those hands to speak for her, not her strict and proud voice when she spoke.

"I said so, because... Woman's lot is always to wait! Wait for someone to come for courting, wait for husband to return home, wait for children to be born. Wait until others decide everything for us. And she does not wait! She went for what she had chosen, no matter who she was born to be, into what life… She makes her own destiny, she loves your brother, and…"

The way she was holding on to Tauriel's hand, talking and talking about her without daring to finally say her own name, was painfully touching. She was desperately seeking protection in those words about her stately heroine, just like youngsters always look for protection at the elders, and this was heart-wrenching, but how to protect her now and from what - he did not know that. Did not know for just a second, and then Sigrid took a sharp deep breath and said:

"And I love you".

It was like an arrow to the chest: for a moment he stood still, not having realized what had happened to him, and then... Perhaps for the first time in his life, he felt panic.

It was impossible for his kin: woman's love was too rare a gift to offer so artlessly. It was as good as to tell a merchant at a fair how much you like his goods. But he always chose such sincerity against any benefits, he always loved the sword, not the bow, talking face to face and life of a soldier, not a general, because it was honest. And her fearless directness astounded him almost more than the meaning of her words.

"Sigrid…" he murmured at last, only not to be silent, and said the only thing he managed to come up with to object her. "You are a maid of human race, and I'm a dwarf".

"What does it matter who we were born?" she said quietly, barely holding her voice from shaking. "The world is not watching us, so what does it matter what it will say? Why should I love those I do not want to?"

He didn't know what to say, didn't know what words to put the truth in so that it wouldn't hurt her.

"Happy will be he who you'll give your love to, but I can not take it". 

She was silent, staring at him with desperate anticipation, and he said the truth as it was. 

"I love another".

His betrothed was waiting for his return in the Blue Mountains, he wore his hair in braids of promise, but those dwarven signs did not tell Sigrid anything. She did not know she was opening her heart for him in vain. And he didn't know, he was never taught how to respond to it. Unlike his brother, who managed to fall a victim to a broken heart at the threshold of Maker knows how many girls, he made his choice once and for all, fought long for the one who he had chosen, and set off on this journey inspired by his enthusiastic and ambitious dreams of how side by side with his brother and uncle he would reclaim their homeland, battle scars would write on his skin that he was a true hero, and in due time he would become King and put a crown on her red locks. And that was all. Nothing like this moment ever came to his mind, and the way Sigrid, so strange and alien, as unlike anything he knew as the earth was unlike the sky, was standing there and offering him her love, turned out to be the only thing in his life he could not manage.

She looked at him for one more moment, and he, too, looked into her eyes, once again wordlessly admiring their marvelous, strange, human color. Sapphires, topaz, jasper, or turquoise - they are never like this.

Only flowers are.

Her gaze fell, she turned and quickly walked, and then ran away.

He never saw her again. And a day later he saw no more.


End file.
